How Copyright Is Denying Us Our Own History

from the what-a-tragedy dept

The Guardian has a fantastic article on a topic we've mentioned before, but haven't discussed in a while. It's about how copyright is getting in the way of us preserving our history. Archivists around the world are facing a massive problem: what should be easier due to new technologies has become an incredible legal nightmare. Digital content degrades quickly, and formats change all the time. Locking up that content, and using things like DRM (where it's illegal to even try to circumvent it) is making it impossible to do important archival activities. This is a huge problem that's only been getting worse -- so it's great to see a mainstream publication like The Guardian addressing it.

Re: agreed

"and the part of the new copyright in canada is that you cannor keep a "library" of anyhting you tape, download, or it falls under anti circumvention aka a 20000$ fine."

This is interesting considering the problems that BBC is having with the old Doctor Who episodes. They lost the originals and can't find anyone who recorded it. Sounds like Canada is going to have the same exact problem in the future. This time it's not an accident.

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Well there VHS tapes (42 of them!) of Dr Who back in the 80's when it ran on PBS in the Chicago area, but they still look like they did then. OK but not dvd quality. One of these days I will get around to digitizing them. Looked at my incomplete list but don't see any of the missing ones listed. It runs from ep 1 to end of season 25. 35 stories missing.

i almost took the article as serious, until i saw him start quoting lessig. at that point, i realizes that the writer is just another techdirt style panic in needle park style writer, and stopped bothering.

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So, you don't see it as being a problem that DRM and legal preventions to circumventing said DRM can prevent the archiving of historical documents? That this is a very real issue that archivers are currently facing? That this can lose the only existing copies of said works?

Oh, no, of course you don't because that would be against the mantras of your corporate masters and require you to acknowledge that sometimes people you despise have a point.

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no, true archivists would contact the original sources and ask for legal non-drm copies for their purposes. the contacts are easy to make and the material is out there in its original non-encoded formats.

for me, the story is one huge strawman, a typical sort of "think about the poor starving archivists" post. mike made a similar post a couple of weeks back about film makers wanting the right to bust drm for their movie making efforts, again easily answered by having them contact the original sources for the material. these are very small and exceptional cases being used as a reason to push for drm to be removed from products. it is transparent in its true intentions.

"Oh, no, of course you don't because that would be against the mantras of your corporate masters and require you to acknowledge that sometimes people you despise have a point." - i almost respected you up to this point, but honestly, shit like this makes you no better than morons like endless.one and rd. sorry, but that is an absolute loser of an argument (and i have no corporate masters, nor do i bow down and bootlick someone claiming to be a guru).

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Could you let us know what a "true archivist' is in your estimation? Is it someone with a certification, an MLIS/MSIS with an archives focus, or someone with the job title of archivist working in an institution, archives, museum, or otherwise? ^_^;

Contacting original sources for an archivist- and most archivists are concerned with *permanent* retention- is not easy and often not possible, especially for collecting archives. These aren't really small and exceptional cases being discussed. This includes both digitally created materials and even more, materials digitized for preservation. Plus, the costs associated with rights management are astronomical. Ask any archivists you might know- American Archives, the journal for the Society of American Archivists, recently had an article for permissions and costs associated with getting permissions in at least one institution.

So while this article might not be specifically referring to archivists in the traditional sense, these issues are of incredible importance to archivists.

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jc, i saw the "Fewer than 25% of the bodies approached by the BL for permissions even bothered to reply.", but i had to laugh. a web archive is one of those things. many people come and go from operating sites, writing blogs, or whatnot, and many of them are unreachable. much of what the bl is looking for is already archived on the wayback machine and similar projects, which are places they should be contacting.

more importantly, a web archive has nothing to do with drm. so now should we be getting rid of drm because only 25% of website owners in the uk took the time to answer the bl? is there something i am not following here?

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The common factor here is the need to get permission.

If you are inhibited from making a copy without permission then it really doesn't matter why you can't get it - the result is the same. The BL is only archiving selected sites - so the comment you made about ephemeral blogs etc is probably mostly irrelevant.

DRM poses a different problem - but the result is the same.

Personally I don't understand why the BL isn't already an exception to all of these rules - they are after all a "CopyRight Library" - which means (in this use of the term) that they have the legal right to a copy of every book published in the UK - which is to be delivered to them at the publisher's expense. I don't understand why this provision doesn't mean that they can demand an unencumbered digital copy of anything (and also copy anything they wish and break any DRM with impunity if the copy is not forthcoming).

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"anything" isnt a book, which may be a stumbling block. the concepts of copying a book may be different from those of copyring an ongoing website, a video archive, etc.

it is shockingly difficult to define the edges of the internet. would you think that the bl could demand a complete copy of techdirt, because it mentioned the uk?

"copyright" on a website does not stop archiving, heck, google and the wayback machine do it already. it would stop them from using it for commercial purpose, that is for sure. but like anything, copyright will expire over time, and the issue will become moot anyway. history, after all, is for after we are dead, no?

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no, true archivists would contact the original sources and ask for legal non-drm copies for their purposes. the contacts are easy to make and the material is out there in its original non-encoded formats.

If you read the article you would have noticed that the BL did exactly as you suggest and fewer than 25% of the bodies approached even replied to the request.

"Even doing that has proved hugely time-consuming because the BL's small staff has to seek permission every time it takes a copy of anything. This is because of the UK's archaic copyright laws, which will hopefully be partially corrected in the digital bill now going through parliament. Fewer than 25% of the bodies approached by the BL for permissions even bothered to reply."

If you don't even read the articles - and dismiss arguments based on who is making them then you don't deserve to be taken seriously.

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richard, they were trying to contact website owners of what are essentially abandoned websites. it isnt about drm in the slightest. they can just archive the website as they see it and call it a day.

"If you don't even read the articles - and dismiss arguments based on who is making them then you don't deserve to be taken seriously." - likewise. dont like mike lead you by the nose into another strawman attack on drm.

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Here's the issue: quite often, the originals *do not exist*. For example, the BBC Doctor Who episodes listed above. Who are you meant to contact if the originals do not exist, or the original copyright holders no longer exist(either as a corporate entity or a person who has died and nobody knows where he kept his originals)?

Furthermore, is this not the MOST important work for archivists? It's far more important to preserve information which is not obtainable through normal means than that which is abundant, but the same laws still apply and risk losing the data forever.

"for me, the story is one huge strawman, a typical sort of "think about the poor starving archivists" post."

Every single one of your posts is a "think of the poor starving corporation", where you're happy to trample individual rights because the old ways of making money no longer apply. You cheer on erosion of rights because *some* people *might* "pirate" a copy of a work and a blogger you constantly troll for no reason might not like it. You're apparently also willing to allow culture and historical record to be destroyed as well.

It's pathetic.

"i have no corporate masters"

Then why do you endlessly support their positions, no matter how counter-productive and damaging to our society they are?

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"For example, the BBC Doctor Who episodes listed above." - there are rare exceptions, less now that we have incredible amounts of backups, reprints, offsite copies, and the like.

put in context, the doctor who episodes in question are, what, 30 hours of tv? that is less than a single days worth of broadcasting in 60+ years. while it is always a major loss to lose such things (and it happens), the true loss rate is very low indeed.

"Then why do you endlessly support their positions, no matter how counter-productive and damaging to our society they are?" - because unlike many here, i stand back and look at the longer, bigger picture. short term, it is easy to find things that are not to our liking or dont go our way (mommy wont give me a toy to play with), but in the long run, things have a way of working out. while a 20 year patent on something might seem like a long time, in reality, it is a very short window in the progress of mankind. the trade that is copyrights and patents may provide short term pain to some, but may also provide gain.

it is easy to get upset and spit and cuss at short term situations that appear out of whack. but in the long run, things work out and we all move forward.

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"put in context, the doctor who episodes in question are, what, 30 hours of tv? "

This is only one example of things that can be lost and certainly shouldn't be lost due to unjustified copy protection laws. To put it in context you have to put in context everything that is lost with respect to everything that is not lost, not merely this one episode with everything that ever existed. That's a dishonest strawman, you know better.

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In the long run things work out for the worse because big corporations have no regard for morality and politicians want their campaign contributions.

"it all depends on how you look at it."

Yeah, if you look at it from the side of corporate profits, it works out for the better (why should past content compete with new content when keeping past content out of the public domain means less competition). When you look at it for the betterment of society, it works out for the worst.

"because unlike many here, i stand back and look at the longer, bigger picture."

Sounds condescending. Yes, because you are special and better than everyone else somehow.

"but may also provide gain. "

Only for corporate profits. For society as a whole it stifles innovation and increases price.

"it is easy to get upset and spit and cuss at short term situations that appear out of whack."

So if you go to a store an they secretly overcharged each customer one cent, that's we should just look at the long term and think, "who cares that I'm being ripped off?"

Or like when scammers get away with millions of dollars by ripping everyone off a few dollars at a time we should just look at the big picture. By that logic I should rob a bank or steal something from a store, it hurts now and is wrong but we should look at the big picture.

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Try reading the article now, please, as it does explain some of this. It will make more sense.

Just in case, let me go slowly: digital formats become obsolete much more quickly than physical media. Even Microsoft's own Office products are often unable to accurately open Office-formatted files from 15 or so years ago. Add to that the problem that the media that the files stored on can often be volatile in the wrong conditions(floppy discs and magnetic tape), easy to damage (ever dropped a hard drive?) or degrade quickly (I've had several DVDs that I've bought only for a manufacturing flaw to cause corrosion and render the disc unusable in just a couple of years).

Yes, correctly backup up and stored media makes some degradation unlikely, but you're assuming that everybody does this. This demonstrably does not happen, especially when it's not corporate-owned product in question, or product deemed "unprofitable" - the very things that most need to be archived.

"put in context, the doctor who episodes in question are, what, 30 hours of tv? that is less than a single days worth of broadcasting in 60+ years."

You would have a point if these were the only things lost in that time. This is not true, and you're an idiot to think it - they're just one of the most famous examples.

"i stand back and look at the longer, bigger picture."

Sadly, no you don't You are literally supporting laws that make it highly likely that areas of our culture will disappear from history because there's money to be made. That's not a long-term view.

"it is easy to get upset and spit and cuss at short term situations that appear out of whack. but in the long run, things work out and we all move forward."

I want to watch London After Midnight, a classic Lon Chaney horror movie with an iconic makeup effect for its lead. Unfortunately, I can't because all known prints were destroyed in the 1960s during a fire at MGM. That studio were the most greedy about retaining ownership of their prints, so many films were lost forever on that day.

Meanwhile, we all have the classic movie Nosferatu to watch because film pirates made enough copies for the "destroy them all" court order from the Bram Stoker estate to be ineffective, a movie that has been highly influential to cinema through to the modern day. I can think of at least 3 movies that literally would not exist had Nosferatu been lost, let alone its influence on everybody from Tim Burton to Tobe Hooper.

The long-term view here is to restore culture so that future artworks may be influenced, and our descendants have a full view of what life was like - not the rewritten version prevalent in history books.

The sad thing is, if your cronies are successful, future generations will not be able to enjoy or understand some aspects of our modern culture. Not only that, but they will have no idea of what was taken from them. You call this a "long-term view"?

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"if your cronies are successful" - you see, i dont even have to answer your rant, because if you think i am involved in any of this, you are sorely mistaken. if you cannot get the simplest facts right, what does it say about the rest?

"I want to watch London After Midnight, a classic Lon Chaney horror movie with an iconic makeup effect for its lead. Unfortunately, I can't because all known prints were destroyed in the 1960s during a fire at MGM. " - things happen. it is sad that it does, but fires and such do happen. it has only been in the last 20 or 30 years that most companies have moved to secure and duplicate storage. after all (and you will hate this) it is their assets too. you dont think that mgm suffered loss as a result?

why not mention that charlie chaplin film that recently turned up? history disappears all over the place, not relative to copyright in the slightest. to blame copyright is a strawman beyond all understanding.

as for your arguments, you are again focusing on narrow instances, compared to the huge amounts of efforts that have been made to get movies off of unsafe nitrate film stock and onto media that will last for a very a long time. you ignore the efforts of the movie industry (in the us at least) to actively digitize old works to provide yet another 'backup' of the content, to preserve history. your arguments are at best a strawman's paradise.

if you cannot get the simple facts right, how can you have a discussion about anything else?

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You mean the weak attempts to backup everything?

Right now in a depo somewhere a film is being lost, a music is being erased and those things will not come back, they may reaper from private collections again and that are people who choose to break the law to maintain their private collections in some way, people who throughout history even risked their lifes to maintain something for posterity(e.g. Monks in the dark ages).

Studios don't have thousands of people, don't have the money to do so, don't have the willingness or the passion that other folks have and they don't even have the numbers, those copybastards should be thanking people who want to preserve those things even though I really dislike those people and that is clouding my judgement because I don't care if their crap disappear forever I don't wanna it but I'm not thinking about future generations and that is the focus of the discussions.

The only real strawman is saying that the industry cares or is doing something about it when we know they are not because we know they don't have the power to do so and things will get lost, even if they agreed things would get lost as you already know and even commented that things get lost even when there is no prohibition and in the face of it it that little problem becomes something bigger.

So you are not here to be realistic you are here to spout the industry nonsense and defend something that is indefensible, you are a sock puppet that will try to spread miss information to others and not bother with the consequences of what you are doing, you are a horrible human being.

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"things happen. it is sad that it does, but fires and such do happen"

Once again, you miss the point entirely.

I'll go slowly, once again: the case of London After Midnight is (yet again) a famous example of something that happens on a regular basis. One organisation has control of all known copies of a particular work. Said copies are destroyed. The work is lost forever. This is one example, out of thousands. I have many examples, but you seem to miss the point that these are not isolated nor unusual cases.

That can happen with digital media as well. Like most corporatists, you seem to assume that all relevant works are being kept by corporations with many resources and experience in taking care of such materials. Most works are not.

"most companies have moved to secure and duplicate storage"

See what I mean? You're making at least 3 major assumptions here - that a company is involved, that they have the budgets and resources to do this (less commercial works are still being lost) and that they are competent in doing so.

"why not mention that charlie chaplin film that recently turned up?"

OK, let's mention that. For many years, that work was considered lost. Nobody could see them or access them - NOBODY. Get that? The fact that copies were eventually found does not excuse this. What if those copies has also been destroyed? If an independent repository were allowed to make copies for posterity, this would not be an issue. But there's money to be made right now, right?

"as for your arguments, you are again focusing on narrow instances, compared to the huge amounts of efforts that have been made to get movies off of unsafe nitrate film stock and onto media that will last for a very a long time"

No, that's exactly what I've said. Yes, there's efforts to preserve SOME films, but it's a time-consuming and expensive process, so only certain non-profits are working on those deemed unprofitable. Works are being lost.

As for media that "lasts a long time" - no, it doesn't really. All it will take is for a company to go bust, and the preservation of the digital files held by them to be unprofitable to a 3rd party. There are many instances where film archives have stumbled across unrecognised "lost" classics in their archives, and these are organisations who specialise in preserving film. It's not hard to see this happening with digital media as well, and once those hard drives are damaged, destroyed or accidentally wiped by the company who acquires them without realising their contents? Lost forever, to protect the profits of more successful companies.

Meanwhile, I notice that you completely ignore one of my other points above. In the time that London After Midnight and the Chaplin film have been considered lost, Nosferatu has had a massive and wide-ranging effect on our culture. This is only because enough copies were made (against the copyright holder's wishes) to ensure that it did not become "lost". Would that lost Chaplin movie have had a similar effect on our culture if it had been freely available? Maybe not, but we will never know.

"if you cannot get the simple facts right, how can you have a discussion about anything else?"

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'True Achivists', you mean like the ones at the British Library in London?

I happen to be interested in Chinese 'Junk' rigged sailing vessels and discovered that GRC Worcester had travelled the coast of China making detailed sketches and recording construction details and their sailing characteristics. Worcester published some of his notes in a little monograph and I searched the major libraries of the world trying to locate a copy. There may be six copies still in existence, one of them is (was?) in the archive stores of the British Library. I went to the UK and got them to retrieve their copy. I could only read it in their reading room and was only allowed to make a copy of a handful of pages (10 I think it was). The publisher is gone, the author is dead and his family unknown. Nobody at the British Library (you know the 'True Archivists') had any idea how I could get a copy or get a copyright release. The book is in fairly bad shape and will probably decay while it remains in storage. Then it will be gone, as probably will any other copies.

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Well, I don't know why TAM doesn't like Lessig, but I don't like him because he is a strong proponent of copyright and increased copyright laws. Not copyright as it stands now (in fact, much fairer copyright), but copyright nonetheless.

His views come from trying to force a broken system to work with how reality actually is, when it really just needs to be dropped for something better.

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Be very careful with the word "always"...

The public won't always be so lenient to allow content creators the right to have a monopoly over their works, especially not, if that means that the rights of the public gets trampled in the process time and again.

Copyright is a two-way street in a pedestrian zone (we, the public, allow you, the content creator, to have a monopoly on something that you created, for a limited time. In exchange, after that limited time is up, that work you created becomes public domain, free to be archived, remixed, reworked into other works, stand on the shoulders of giants and all),
that's being treated as a one way highway for copyright holders (we, the copyright holders own this imaginary, sorry intellectual property, and you have to ask for permission for every action you want to do with our property even after you've given us money for it).

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I just dont agree with mr lessigs points of view, for a whole bunch of reasons. on the surface, i dislike the 'lessig method' of presentation (one mikey likes), because the rapid presentation of visual material and speech does not permit the audience the time to digest the material and reach their own conclusions. rather, they are so busy dealing with the next image and the next idea that they have to swallow what they are told whole, rather than having the time to consider it. for me, it is an indication of how mr lessig does business, a sort of virtual "jam it down your throat" approach that doesnt encourage people to make informed choices, just to accept what they are told.

that many of lessigs most famous cases end in dismissal or losses isnt surprising. that he is attached to a wingnut group like "call a convention" only shows what level this guy will go to in order to get his way, even if it is not the will of the people.

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"If there is some fundamental axiom behind his arguments that you don't accept then you ought to be able to identify it." - i am not a fan of eff, i am not a fan of ripping off the leg of the system and clubbing it over the head to get things done, etc.

i am not a huge fan of claiming everything and anything is against the 1st amendment, i find that it is one of the legally weakest arguments around. kahle v ashcroft and eldred v ashcroft are examples of someone seeking to use the 1st amendment in ways that it was not intended. for me, the logic is a fail from start to finish, the relief he (and his clients) are looking for once again should be found in the halls of congress, and not in the court system. for me, he is on par with the people claiming that us citizens should never have to pay income tax.

his presentation style annoys me because he attempts to shovel the information at you so quickly that you cannot process it, merely accept it. it is a sign of someone with a weak argument trying to convince you it is strong.

in the end, it concerns me greatly that someone with such 'off the map' ideas and concepts is a professor teaching his students that it is right, even as the courts have struck him down (a 7-2 loss in the SC is as close as you get to a 9-0, because the court pretty much always wants a dissenting opinion to work from). those who can do, those who cannot teach. all hail the professor!

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"If there is some fundamental axiom behind his arguments that you don't accept then you ought to be able to identify it." - i am not a fan of eff, i am not a fan of ripping off the leg of the system and clubbing it over the head to get things done, etc.

meaningless rant
i am not a huge fan of claiming everything and anything is against the 1st amendment, i find that it is one of the legally weakest arguments around. kahle v ashcroft and eldred v ashcroft are examples of someone seeking to use the 1st amendment in ways that it was not intended.

No actual argument here - no attempt to explain why you disagree - still no actual axiom that you disagree with - unless it is the First Amendment itself. Incidentally what piece of magic telepathy give you unerring knowlwdge of the intentions of those who wrote it?

for me, the logic is a fail from start to finish, the relief he (and his clients) are looking for once again should be found in the halls of congress, and not in the court system. for me, he is on par with the people claiming that us citizens should never have to pay income tax.

Just claiming that something is a logic fail is itself a logic fail - because to claim a logic fail you have to demonstrate how the logic fails by one of the standard methods of logic - not just assert it- which I have just done and you never do.

The copyright extension issues you allude to most certainly do belong in the courts - because they amount to a legally sanctioned breach of contract in the interests of private individuals and corporations.

It is not the job of parliaments to make laws that take money out of one specific private person's pocket and put it into another's*. If they do make such a law then where else can the disadvantaged party turn to other than the courts?

his presentation style annoys me because he attempts to shovel the information at you so quickly that you cannot process it, merely accept it. it is a sign of someone with a weak argument trying to convince you it is strong.

To me that is a sign of a listener who is on a lower intellectual level than the speaker. I can see why that listener might find the experience unpleasant - but sometimes one just has to accept that others might be more able.

in the end, it concerns me greatly that someone with such 'off the map' ideas and concepts is a professor

That is exactly what Professors are supposed to do. It is their purpose to think outside the box. If Professors don't do that then who will?
teaching his students that it is right, even as the courts have struck him down (a 7-2 loss in the SC is as close as you get to a 9-0, because the court pretty much always wants a dissenting opinion to work from).

Current practice will always lag those who are thinking innovatively for the future. How long did it take your country to abolish slavery? There was a significant period during which the anti-slavery lobby was being consistently slapped down by the legal system.
those who can do, those who cannot teach. all hail the professor!

Consider the Space shuttle.

Built by those who "do". Crashed disastrously in 1986. Errors in design uncovered by Professor Richard Feynmann (who loved teaching and remarked many times on how it invigorated his research work).

*Where something like this is defencible it is for the alleviation of poverty, taking from the richest irrespective of the source of their wealth.

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"rapid presentation of visual material and speech"

Mike regularly posts in *text format*, which allows you to peruse every word at your leisure. He also links to other sites or posts to cite his sources and indulges in conversation with posters here, even retracting and correcting his original posts when he is proven incorrect or mistaken.

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TAM doesn't have a valid argument to make so he has to find something else to attack. He doesn't realize how dishonest it is for the mainstream media to present only one side of an issue and whenever anyone has the opportunity to present another side of the issue via the Internet or otherwise he must find something to complain about and pretend that anyone with an opposing view is the villein and that he is somehow the victim. It must be Wednesday!

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meh, most of our current culture really isn't worth saving. Most of it is about acquiring more stuff and bigger places to store more stuff. not worth it. maybe DRM is there to make sure noone after us remembers how utterly horrible our culture is.

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While I do agree with you that most of what is being pinched off today is crap, it may not always be. Vincent van Gogh was considered trash back in the day, never being able to sell his paintings (I think he sold a total of 1 when he was alive). Now he's considered to be one of the greatest painters in history. How can these copyright maximalists deny the next Vincent van Gogh?

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Hay, I didn't say everything was a Van Gogh. Hell, I don't know if anything is a Van Gogh.

Even those things you mentioned should be saved. As bad as it is, this is our culture, this is our mark on history. It should not be forgotten, even if it's just to remind people not to make the same mistakes.

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So, who's the arbiter of taste? Someone, somewhere hates the things that you love and consider them either worthless or degrading. Should they be removed from history because your tastes don't match a certain majority taste? Tastes change constantly, and yours is not necessarily the "right" one.

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Are you calling France a totalitarian state????

Just kidding, PaulIT, I really do not want DRM or anything that might prevent us from archiving the best of us all. (Or prevent me from watching my licensed copy of IT Crowd years into the future... see I don't hate *all cheese.)

Re: Big deal! Most don't *learn* from history, anyway.

Archives

Didn't you know? The Record and Movie companies will do their own archiving. They want to shut off all their work to the public unless you pay. So we the public will shut off all archiving in places like the Smithsonian and other museums. They have proven themselves to be anti-social and greedy money mongers that don't deserve the public doing anything for them. In other words they have become the enemy.

Something to think about

Recently, Hollywood Video is closing its doors. Right now, they're offering %60 off all sorts of videos and games that no one would be able to rent for the longest time.

It's funny, there are a lot of movies that come out every year that go unnoticed because it's not a summer blockbuster or filled with AAA actors. I remembered watching quite a few of the movies, whereas other movies I just didn't pay attention to.

It got me thinking about a site to archive this part of our culture. Hate to say it but the DVD is damn near dead. With hard drives going down in price (and Hollywood balking at lowering license fees in accordance) we'll hear more and more about places shutting down as Netflix and RedBox take over where Blockbuster dominated for the longest.

Within all of this, there are very few places that have all of the TV series, movies, anime, or anything else that you can find that is out and used for entertainment.

I have to wonder, is our entertainment in control of us now? With copyrights so long in the tooth, it seems sad that in order to archive our history in a format other than a book, it takes so much effort. As we speak, there are a lot of 1930s movies that are rotting away in a vault under copyright. That's a lot of silent movies that are dying a slow painful death because none of the other actors were as popular as Charlie Chaplin.

Which just begs the question of how much is enough? How long do we have to wait on our culture before we can once again influence it? How much longer until we can find a new business model that works to allow us to make a movie, modify it to our own situation and form new markets of business without the government having to intervene?

Re: Something to think about

With places like this debating the issue with various levels of success and respect.

The rise of CC licenses and such and the increasing concern about the shrinking of the public domain by those who can be considered to be anything but extremists on the issue of copyright.

The concern about locking anything and everything behind patent walls without remembering that invention is part of human culture as well.

In fact our entertainment industries are, or want to be, in control of our culture.

And I don't trust government to keep out of the way even if, by some miracle, copyright and patents return to something close to their original intent in both time and scope. Politicians, at least, are far too beholden to the trays of money the entertainment industries have to offer.

In the end, as it's always been, it's up to the people, the citizenry to force the issue on a reluctant governing "class" which is becoming more mercantile by the second. But, thank God, we are finding ways.

Enough of this nonsense. They are literally forcing us to break the law. So, it's time that we came up with better methods of breaking digital locks and distributing electronic data to circimvent this nonsense.

I for one am going to send all my originals to a hot site in China and let them do their best to break and distribute anything that has a digital lock. Then I will recopy their format and if anybody says anything, well then sorry, I just have the Chinese version, not your North Am copywritten version. At least China will have copies for us.

Considering that items can now be moved back out of public domain and back under copyright, maybe somebody should put the Declaration of Independence and or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom on a digital lock so nobody is allowed to have an electronic copy. What bullshit.

So screw ALL of you who put digital locks on anything.

More money and support to Project Gutenberg and the like and legalize pirate bay. Let the public vote on the issue and not just let lobbyists have their say.

Re:

I believe the problem is that lobbyists are very dedicated to one issue, whereas the public is very fragmented. In order to have a say, we would need a group close to the size of the AARP to break the gridlock that lobbying efforts have on this issue. Until more people can educate themselves other than "DRM? What's that?" IMO, this will continue to destroy Amendments 1, 4, and 8.

Re: Re: Since when have we ever preserved history?

The problem is that digital is being sold as permanent when in fact it is useless much quicker than older media. Ihave prints of photos from the 1950's if they were on 5 1/4 computer disks how accessable would they be. Plus some of the better film types are no longer available. Kodachrome was a great archival film and you can no longer buy it or get it processed.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Since when have we ever preserved history?

The problem here is, thanks to the non-circumvention clause and other fun things, These companies who cannot be bothered to preserve their own work (work so important they need to control it until the end of time) can also block the varied methods of recopying and digital preservation that people would have to use.

"Oh, the DVD archive is breaking down? well, you certainly can't copy the remaining discs onto new media! the half-hearted security measure added by a long-shuttered company renders any attempt to copy a Crime. You should buy a new copy.. oh, you can't? that is so sad.."

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Since when have we ever preserved history?

The problem here is, thanks to the non-circumvention clause and other fun things, These companies who cannot be bothered to preserve their own work (work so important they need to control it until the end of time) can also block the varied methods of recopying and digital preservation that people would have to use.

Throughout history we didn't have the technology to make copies, and culture survived.

Libraries and museums bought want they wanted to preserve, or someone gave it to them.

I'm just trying to interject some clarification into this. Somehow we survived since the beginning of mankind without archiving everything we produced. We honestly don't need to copy everything and if people don't want to make it accessible, so be it.

And if it is so important that is already being reproduced millions of times, some of those copies will turn up when we need them.

Here's what I propose rather than fretting over copyright here: Reach out to the crowd to create storage technologies that will continue to work 200 years from now. Ask the collective intelligence of the world to find new methods of data preservation so that the ebooks being published now are readable centuries from now. Or, go back to putting important stuff on paper.

And here's another project. Find a way to preserve ancient languages, species, and indigenous cultures that are disappearing. IP protection isn't the reason those are disappearing.

If you want to make sure nothing in existence today is lost to the future, there are lots of projects to tackle and you don't need to wait for the IP laws to change to address them.

There's also so much stuff that ends up in the trash which might be of interest to someone, but there's just no room to store/save it.

Throughout history we didn't have the technology to make copies, and culture survived.

SL :"Throughout history we didn't have the technology to make copies, and culture survived."

ME : EXACTLY true.

The whole post by Mike is just a "paper tiger" rant excuse against copyright -- but as usual Mike is "all agenda" w/ no HONEST historical perspective.

Just because there are some "archivists" that do a poor job and live in a dusty past does not mean copyright is flawed.

"The Price of Freedom" --- sometime "free speech" sucks ( like "holocaust deniers" for exp.) -- but i still like a Country w/ free speech over one w/ censorship of every word. -- or even some of them . ( i.e. --Great Britain STILL does not have 100% free political speech. )
-----------------------------
Sometimes Copyright is a bit of a pain ---- but a world w/o copyrights for Artists and Writers would be worse -- much worse.

Copyright protects more history--[ and the people who write it ]--- then it looses ,,, by far !

Copyright is such "Common Sense" -- that it was put into the U.S. Constitution before "free speech" even.
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Mike , you can play all the little "convoluted conniptions" you want , and find "weird" & "out of the loop" lawyers and etc who hate copyright like you do -- But NOBODY with any real government power cares about your view-- Pirates are criminals-- and the laws will just get STRONGER against them as the days pass.

The anti-copyright gang is right in there with "holocaust deniers" and "birthers" , as foils considered more loony than sane. You just cannot reasonably debate w/ the loonies.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Since when have we ever preserved history?

"Throughout history we didn't have the technology to make copies, and culture survived."

Yet we did have the technology to make copies. We printed copies after moveable type was developed, hand copied scrolls, codexs (sp) and clay bricks before that, painted walls and temples or painted the interior of caves.

All this to tell our stories, to account for the wealth of our nation, tribe or group to become a culture.

The technology, to be sure, was by no means as efficient or fast as what we had now but it did exist and humans used it.

A lot ended up in the trash or was lost or we thought it was lost and later found it again or became able to interpret it again.

A lot will be or trashed now. Does anyone in the future really need a full season of Benny Hill or My Mother The Car? What would they think of mid 20th Century culture if that was all they had? Or if all they had was the Beatles?

That's not up to us to say but for those who come after of course.

Loosening up IP laws makes the most sense. Note that I did not say abandon them completely just the more extreme idiocy around them now. Allow archivists to copy, break DRM where necessary legally and give them the incentive to work on a system of read anywhere, store anywhere methods that aren't encumbered by copyright, patents or any other nonsense, in short public domain, documented protocols and formats that those who come after us can easily use.

Until now our archiving has been random. Paper and ink have been remarkably resilient, painting on stones and rocks more so. If we can we need to emulate that.

hi. i am TAM. i am obtuse and difficult to have a discussion with. i pretend to take the moral high road but i'm really just another sanctimonious blogshill who wouldn't even have a job right now if not for the recent rise in online piracy. i secretly have terabytes of pirated content and rarely ever spend any money on content. i also enjoy buying posters of the US constitution and defecating on them because i hate freedom and independence, especially for the common citizen. i believe in every man's right to agree with me or shut the hell up.

i cannot get a normal writing job because my SHIFT key is broken, so i blogshill for the only bidder, often worsening my paymasters' position with my drivel. i like mike masnick and secretly envy his ability to effectively use capitalization in his writing. one day, i will save up enough blogshill monies to buy a new keyboard and then i will start my own blog, complete with capital letters and lots of my trademarked tam opinions on copyright.

when i quote something, i like to make it unreadable and difficult to discern where the quote ends and my drivel begins. in this way, i am able to prevent most people from reading my comments, because my trademarks give away in advance what the content of my comment will be. only the uninitiated ever waste their time responding to me, because once you know me, you realized i'm paid to spout the same crap time and again. logic? honesty? hahahahaha. no money to be made from those.

if you need my services i will be glad to help weaken your position on a given topic. my experience in this area of internet terrorism is unrivaled. i can be reached via email: tam@rent-a-shill.com

Re: what formats cannot be read today ?? none thats what...

It's already easy to 'steal', to 'use without permission' no matter what the laws say or techo-DRM 'allows'.

What is at issue here is that to LEGALLY copy and preserve this culture is a minefield of inefficiency and potential loss, precisely because of those laws, DRM and non-respondence.

In other words, genuine promotion of the culture (and are you really going to pretend that the British Library - like the Library of Congress - is against 'promoting the progress' - or is even a 'thieving pirate') should not only be provided for but actively promoted and eased - NOT hindered and hampered by laws designed to help big corporations lock away culture until 'forever-minus-a-day'.

Its not about stopping progress, its about what you Do with the data/content.

Archiving, would fall under fair use, and not be an issue with copyright, its for educational purposes, non-profit, and represents no loss to the original authors.

Assuming all the do is hold a copy, not make copies available against copyright.

That would breach copyright law, by profiting from the work of others.
But to just copy, for the sake of archieving, is fine..

You need to look at the balancing test, to see that there is nothing wrong with the practice, but there is something wrong with taking copies for your own use, your own gains, and to deny the rightfull owner of that content due compensation.

Re: Its not about stopping progress, its about what you Do with the data/content.

Archiving, would fall under fair use, and not be an issue with copyright, its for educational purposes, non-profit, and represents no loss to the original authors.

Assuming all the do is hold a copy, not make copies available against copyright.

I'm assuming it has been discussed in Techdirt somewhere, but copies are made all the time when hard drives and servers are backed up. There haven't been massive lawsuits preventing individuals, organizations, and companies from backing up their data. And smart organizations make multiple backup copies.

Re: Re: Its not about stopping progress, its about what you Do with the data/content.

Here's what I found:

Copyright in the Library - Archival copies: "Subsection (b) gives libraries the right to archive unpublished materials; subsection (c) addresses archiving published materials. The requirements for the two kinds of materials are different: to make a copy of an unpublished work, a library's purpose must be preservation or security and it must have a copy of the work in its collection; to make a copy of a published work, a library's purpose can only be to replace a copy it has or used to have in its collection, because the copy has been damaged, is deteriorating, lost or stolen, or the format has become obsolete. Such published works also must be out of print."

Re:Copyright in the Library - Archival copies: Re: Re: Its not about stopping progress, its about what you Do with the data/content.

Digital

Digital content degrades quickly? How so? Unless I'm missing something, the speed of degradation has to do with the storage medium, not whether it's digital or analog. I know it was kind of an off the cuff statement, but I wouldn't mind some clarification. Maybe you're saying that the storage media commonly in use today are not suitable for archival storage?